Each had her own suite of apartments; each was expected to keep a maid, and to dress with the utmost care and propriety. There were fine horses in the stables for their equestrian exercise, there were grooms 181 to attend them during it, and there were regular reception-days, which afforded tyros in social accomplishments practical opportunities for cultivating the graceful and gracious urbanity which evidences really fine breeding.
Many of Aspatria’s companions were of high rank,—Lady Julias and Lady Augustas, who were destined to wear ducal coronets and to stand around the throne of their young queen. But they were always charmingly pleasant and polite, and Aspatria soon acquired their outward form of calm deliberation and their mode of low, soft speech. For the rest, she decided, with singular prudence, to cultivate only those talents which nature had obviously granted her.
A few efforts proved that she had no taste for art. Indeed, the attempt to portray the majesty of the mountains or the immensity of the ocean seemed to her childishly petty and futile. She had dwelt among the high places and been familiar with the great sea, and to make images of 182 them appeared a kind of sacrilege. But she liked the study of languages, and she had a rich contralto voice capable of expressing all the emotions of the heart. At the piano she hesitated; its music, under her unskilled fingers, sounded mechanical; she doubted her ability to put a soul into that instrument. But the harp was different; its strings held sympathetic tones she felt competent to master. To these studies she added a course of English literature and dancing. She was already a fine rider, and her information obtained from the vicar’s library and the Encyclopædia covered an enormous variety of subjects, though it was desultory, and in many respects imperfect.
Her new life was delightful to her. She had an innate love for study, for quiet, and for elegant surroundings. These tastes were fully gratified. The large house stood in a fair garden, surrounded by very high walls, with entrance-gates of handsomely wrought iron. Perfect quiet reigned within this flowery enclosure. She could study 183 without the constant interruptions which had annoyed her at home; and she was wisely aided in her studies by masters whose low voices and gliding steps seemed only to accentuate the peace of the wide schoolroom, with its perfect appointments and its placid group of beautiful students.
On Saturdays Brune generally spent several hours with her; and if the weather were fine, they rode or walked in the Park. Brune was a constant wonder to Aspatria. Certainly his handsome uniform had done much for him, but there was a greater 184 change than could be effected by mere clothes. Without losing that freshness and singleness of mind he owed to his country training, he had become a man of fashion, a little of a dandy, a very innocent sort of a lady-killer. His arrival caused always a faint flutter in Mrs. St. Alban’s dove-cot, and the noble damosels found many little womanly devices to excuse their passing through the parlour while Brune was present. They liked to see him bend his beautiful head to them; and Lady Mary Boleyn, who was Aspatria’s friend and companion, was mildly envied the privileges this relation gave her.
During the vacations Aspatria was always the guest of one or other of her mates, though generally she spent them at the splendid seat of the Boleyns in Hampshire, and the unconscious education thus received was of the greatest value to her. It gave the ease of nature to acquired accomplishments, and, above all, that air which we call distinction, which is rarely natural, and is attained only by 185 frequent association with those who dwell on the highest social peaks.
Much might be said of this phase of Aspatria’s life which may be left to the reader’s imagination. For three years it saw only such changes as advancing intelligence and growing friendships made. The real change was in Aspatria personally. No one could have traced without constant doubt the slim, virginal, unfinished-looking girl that left Seat-Ambar, in the womanly perfection of Aspatria aged twenty-four years. She had grown several inches taller; her angles had all disappeared; every joint was softly rounded. Her hands and arms were exquisite; her throat and the poise of her head like those of a Greek goddess. Her hair was darker and more abundant, and her eyes retained all their old charm, with some rarer and nobler addition.
To be sure, she had not the perfect regularity of feature that distinguished some of her associates, that exact beauty which Titian’s Venus possesses, and which makes 186 no man’s heart beat a throb the faster. Her face had rather the mobile irregularity of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, the charming face that men love passionately, the face that men can die for.